Dallas Stars Blog

Stars off-day update: Travel and rest, Dillon could skate Sunday

Dallas Stars defenseman Brenden Dillon (4) battles with Columbus Blue Jackets right wing Cam Atkinson (13) in the first period of NHL Hockey action at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas on Wednesday, April 8, 2014. (Brad Loper/The Dallas Morning News)

The Stars spent Saturday flying back and adjusting to the two-hour time difference. They will be back on the ice Sunday on the practice ice in Frisco at 10:30 a.m., and I have been told that practices will be open to the public.

What fans will be cheering for is a return of defenseman Brenden Dillon to the practice ice. Dillon has been out since the regular season game against St. Louis with a lower body injury, and he has yet to test his “lower body” with a skate since the injury. He’s been working off the ice in Anaheim, and Stars coach Lindy Ruff said Dillon might be able to skate on Sunday.

However, that does not mean he will be available for Game 3 Monday at American Airlines Center.

“There’s a chance he could skate tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes,” Ruff said this afternoon. “But skating once and trying to play is a pretty big task, really.”

Ruff said he feels good about his team’s performance in Anaheim and believes they will be better at home.

“We’ve played real good hockey, especially the last 15,20 games here,” Ruff said of getting back on home ice. “In front of four crowd, it think that added energy will help our team.”

So how does he look at the series after being down 2-0?

“The feeling right now is we could be 1-1, we could be 2-0, but we’re 0-2,” he said. “We have to clean up a couple of mistakes, but I thought our second game was a lot better than the first, but we didn’t take advantage of a couple of key opportunities and made a couple of big mistakes that turned the tide on us.”

So how do the Stars deal with that?

“One game at a time,” Ruff said. “We’ve focused on improving a couple of areas in the game. I thought we did. I thought our transition was better. I thought we got a lot of pucks to the goal line and put him under a lot of duress. We had the puck for the most part more than they did and forced them into a lot of situations we could have taken advantage of and didn’t.”

Dallas had a 36-19 advantage in shots on goal in Game 2, including 15-2 in the third period. However, Anaheim scored a shorthanded goal on one of its two shots in the third, and that ended up being the game-winner. Now the Stars have to concentrate on handling turnovers better (all three Anaheim goals in Game 2 were off of turnovers) and improving the power play.

“I think you look at that you’ve got to take advantage of them,” Ruff said of his philosophy on turnovers. “There’s going to be some in the game. The early turnover by them that led to the Garbutt breakaway, we didn’t score. They’ve taken advantage of some of our key mistakes, there’s going to be mistakes in the game, you’re not going to clean up up every one. We’d like to keep them to a minimum, though.”

As for the power play, it is 2-for-11 in the series, and has done some good things. However, it has had the chance to tie both games late and has failed at that task.

“I really think simplify it,” Ruff said. “Our second opportunities weren’t there. We passed up some opportunities just to get pucks to the net. We made a nice play on the first power play, obviously, scored a PP goal in the first game and really scored a second one when the time expired. Power play, sometimes, when a team gets to study you is tough. We’ve got to do a better job on retrievals and second opportunities.”

All in all, he said the team feels good.

“Anybody that watched the games, getting down 4-0, this team doesn’t quit,” Ruff said of Game 1. “We almost got right back in that game. We had the lead in this one. We had opportunities. Even the (Trevor) Daley opportunity to tie it up with 4 minutes left, we didn’t get the puck in the right spot. It doesn’t feel like an 0-2 series. We definitely haven’t been dominated. In fact, the last game we dominated, we just didn’t win. We’ve got to clean up some of our mistakes and take advantage of some of those key opportunities.”

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